Twitter, which was launched in 2006 and is specifically designed as a social networking site, is considered to be among the most popular social media platforms that exist today. It has achieved a record of 100 million daily active users and 500 million tweets per day.
This social media platform can be helpful to its users in a variety of ways, as it helps in receiving daily news and updates and offers the opportunity to follow high-profile celebrities, as well as enabling its users to stay in touch with friends.
Twitter is incredibly easy to use and exciting, and in this article, we will look at its birth as well as how it has made itself capable with millions of users’ records to date.
What is Twitter?
Being an online news and social networking site, Twitter allows people to communicate with one another via short messages, which are termed "tweets." Specifically, it is a micro-blogging service (a combination of blogging and instant messaging) that allows its registered users to perform functions like posting, sharing, liking, and replying to tweets with the help of short messages. Non-registered users, on the other hand, do not have this option and can only read other people's tweets.
To access Twitter, one must have an internet connection and a smartphone or PC to get access to the app or the website twitter.com.
Twitter was formed in 2006, when it emerged from another startup named Odeo, which was a podcasting company. Jack Dorsey shared the idea of a new online communication application with Evan Williams, co-founder of Odeo. This SMS-based application would allow its users to share short messages with groups of people, which is comparatively similar to sending text messages.
In its early phase, Twitter was referred to as the "twttr" and its name denotes the short burst of insignificant information and chirp from the birds, which clearly defines its purpose, i.e., social networking or sharing short and quick information.
Twitter was finally introduced to the public on July 15, 2006. The website started to record around 20,000 tweets per day in the first months, but gradually this number grew to 60,000 in 2007, as Twitter became a trending topic of discussion at the Southwest Interactive conference.
Controversial phases of Twitter
Since it was founded in 2006, Twitter has been on a rollercoaster ride that highlights many of the decisions and controversies it has had to face.
Let’s have a brief insight into the journey it has covered and the hurdles it has had to face through the 16 years of its existence.
Twitter’s controversies started in December 2009, when it was "hacked." A group referring to itself as the Iranian Cyber Army took credit for the "Twitter Hack," but it was later discovered that it was a DNS exploit that was designed to redirect the users from Twier.com to another page containing the message "This site is hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army, and we control and manage this internet with our power." So do not try to stimulate the Iranians to... Now which country is on the embargo list? Iran? The USA? We push them onto the embargo list. Take Care".
There was a sabotage of the server that linked the Twitter domain name to an IP address, which changed Twitter’s DNS records into an IP address that contained that particular message.
Moreover, another controversy arose when Elon Musk took control of the social networking platform. This resulted in the firing of many employees, and lawsuits were filed against the entrepreneur. This will be further discussed in this article.
Influence of Twitter across the globe
Twitter was made available to the public in 2013, and it has since reached its peak value. Since then, the company has achieved a growing valuation over time. Now, Twitter has its services in more than 40 languages and has been able to become an online feed to record its benchmarks throughout history.
However, Twitter's success has not come without controversy or setbacks. Let’s have a brief insight into the controversies surrounding Twitter, how it had become one of the staple items in our society, and the challenges that the company had to face while trying to attract more users.
Twitter had helped to highlight a wide range of social movements and political causes all around the globe. Hashtags like #JusticeForGeorge and #BlackLivesMatter have become trending in recent time due to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Also, Twitter had helped millions to share their voice and ensure that they would be heard during the Arab Spring as well as the human rights protests taking place in Iran.
Soon after Twitter became a "staple," some elected officials started to realize the revolutionary impact of the application.
As said by Gardner, a former US president, "Barack Obama was the first person who used social media to influence his people." It was because of Barack Obama that the countries got connected virtually and people started talking to one another online. But Gardner stated that Trump was the person who took tweeting to a new level.
As he said, "Trump was like a quarterback who would throw his ideologies and beliefs to his wide receivers, who were people that would react to the particular message."
But later, on January 6, 2021, Twitter removed Trump’s Twitter account due to the attack that took place in the U.S. Capitol.
Interesting events on Twitter
With 16 years under its belt, Twitter has all grown up now. The social networking platform was once used to post its users' daily events, and 70 million shares were being offered for $26 each. Throughout its journey, Twitter had to survive many failures, corporate backstabbing, and attempted buyouts by global giants like Yahoo, Facebook, and Al Gore. With a record of 230 million monthly users, Twitter thus became one of the most popular social media platforms existing today.
For years, Twitter struggled with the decision of developing a viable revenue stream. This changed in 2010, when the company introduced the feature of "promotion tweets" in users' search results as well as their timelines. Since then, Twitter has expanded its features, which would include video clips as well as the promotion of trending topics. Thus, the company had been able to generate revenue of $47 million with the help of their ad revenues and had targeted to achieve a revenue collection of close to a billion dollars in the year 2014.
In 2013, the public offerings of Twitter put the world surprise, as the company declared to go public in 2014.
With the beginning of Twitter as a messaging service provider powered mostly by texting with the help of cellphones, it soon began to become one of the internet’s giants and had entry into Wall Street after seven years, as an internet giant with a market capitalization reaching $13 billion.
Moreover, another significant event in twitter’s journey took place on 14th April 2022. This is the time when Elon Musk proposed the acquisition of Twitter, which finally concluded on 27th October 2022. Elon Musk, an entrepreneur and businessman, began to buy Twitter shares in January 2022, and later became one of the largest shareholders of the company with 9.1 percent of ownership taken.
Initially, Musk was invited by Twitter to join the Board of Directors, which he accepted before declining. Then on 14th April, he made the offer to purchase the company. Initially, Twitter’s board responded by ‘poison pill’ strategy to resist an unfriendly takeover. Later, the board accepted to hand over Twitter to Musk, with the offer of $44 billion against the company ownership, on April 25. Musk stated that he wanted to upgrade the social networking platform with some new features, making the algorithms open-sourced, as well as removing the spam bot accounts, thereby promoting free speech.
After the $44 billion buyout, on 28th October Elon musk gathered several employees of Twitter who were called to a meeting, in San Franciso. Elon stated to the employees to be prepared for widespread layoffs, where the news was spread that twitter’s workforce is to be slashed immediately, and those who will be ‘fired’, will not be benefited from any bonuses which were mentioned to be paid by Nov. 1st.
Elon was warned by the executives regarding the mentioned decision he took, which would possibly violate the employment laws, as well as the contracts, and would have been breached, ultimately resulting in employee lawsuits. But Elon took this as a challenge and replied with an astounding answer that he is already accustomed to the court and has been paying penalties and thus he does not care about the risks.
But after a couple of days, Musk finally realised the cost of such potential fines and lawsuits, and with such a huge amount of penalties to be paid, it was getting delayed. Thus, Musk waited until 1st November to start cutting the jobs.
Musk fired most of the top executives, which included the former CEO, Parag Agarwal. Since this decision was executed, musk laid down several reforms in the company. Also, this resulted in resigning of hundreds of employees, which led to musk issuing an ultimatum, which demanded ‘extreme hardcore’ work!
